


A little bit of lightning

by suyari



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Kid Fic, M/M, mckirk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-05
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-11 20:39:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2082384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suyari/pseuds/suyari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He shouldn’t have ever worried. Jim and Jo get on like a house on fire that’s been pre-soaked in flammable liquid after being constructed of purely ignitable materials.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A little bit of lightning

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a 'Jim and Jo build a blanket fort for Bones to find when he gets home' ficclet. Yeah...that didn't happen at all.

Joanna is four and he’s into his third year at the Academy when his harpy of an ex-wife decides she wants a round the solar system honeymoon with the man Jo will be calling ‘dad’ over his stone cold dead body. Naturally this means that she is quick to remind him of responsibilities she otherwise chooses to ignore and deny him. And as much as it pisses him off, there’s nothing he wouldn’t do to have his baby girl with him. Even if its under a dormitory roof with a none too discriminating sunshine blond and jewel eyed interstellar romeo for a roommate. If he’s honest with himself, he’s long been nervous about the two most important people in his life meeting for the first time. Jo was his everything: his reason for living, the center of his universe. Jim was the sun he orbited. The sheer force of nature in human form that masqueraded as a careless idiot with enough allergies to be considered a living databank. Jim was his motivation. The reason he got up every morning - because the damn fool could burn the kitchen down making coffee. If there was a certain...fondness, he never admitted it. Because if nothing else, Leonard McCoy protected himself to the exclusion of all joy. That is, until Jim caught wind of it. 

He shouldn’t have ever worried, he supposes. Because every pretty thing with a pulse falls instantly, irrevocably, madly in love with James T. Kirk the moment they set eyes on him. Joanna is the prettiest thing he’s ever seen, so quite naturally, she is hopelessly and completely lost the moment Jim drops into a crouch and beams that damn cheery smile at her. 

They get on like a house on fire that’s been pre-soaked in flammable liquid after being constructed of purely ignitable materials. In other words...he’s caught up in the crazy of their excitement as they feed off one another’s energy. It’s like having _two_ four year olds. 

The days go by almost too quickly to keep track of. Jim with his command track schedule spends the most time with Jo, as his own schedule hit lockdown the moment he earned his first commendation. It’s annoying to the point of angering him, but he finds even coming home long after Jo’s fallen asleep, the feeling evaporates under the sense of home and family that settles itself deeper into his heart every time he walks through their apartment’s front door. It had never felt so right with Jocelyn. Even when he was at his most blind with love. But coming home to Jim and Jo...it’s everything he always imagined having a family of his own would be. It’s _more_. The sound of laughter, the untidy everything, the thump of feet as he wanders into an impromptu laser tag battle. The smell of dinner and the clink of plates as Jo sets the table and Jim reminds him he can damn well cook and that he thoroughly likes it, thank you very much. The glow of the entertainment screen reflecting across Jim and Jo’s lighter hair. The snuggle of her between them on the couch and the way Jim always gets up first and says softly, “It’s okay Bones, I’ve got her.” The way they put her to bed together, because he’ll never miss a minute he doesn’t have to. And the quiet way they both watch her for a moment before Jim turns and grips his arm with a warm smile and walks out. 

Jim doesn’t bring anyone home all the while Jo is with them. He doesn’t go out. Or drink too much, or do anything even remotely stupid. He’s surprisingly mature and responsible and it takes Leonard a while to realize that maybe Jo is filling the hole in Jim he’s always so desperate to ignore. They can often be found in one another’s company. Content to sit and chat as readily as run about the apartment upturning everything. It strikes him one day when Jim is letting Jo brush his hair and put bows and clips in, smiling and chatting and laughing in a way that’s not even indulgent, in a manner that’s completely sincere. Jim is enjoying himself and Jo’s company. He’s opened himself to her wholly in a way Leonard would have never even thought him capable. Jo’s equal acceptance and the unconditional love of a child she’s funneled into Jim unchecked is a complete about face from how abrasive she usually is with anyone not her parents. Like the proverbial bolt from the sky it comes to him. While he’s sitting in pajama pants and an old tee he’s pretty sure is actually Jim’s, watching Jo and Jim talk about some boy on a vidshow, the feeling crashes over him like a wave. Home and family and yes and Jim. He loves him. He loves him exactly the way he is. He loves how Jim loves Jo. Loves how Jo loves Jim. Loves how it feels when they’re all together like this. He never, ever wants it to end. Will give anything, promise everything, if he could just live forever in this moment with them. 

Jo brings him back to his senses before he does anything stupid. 

“Daddy!”

“Yes, darlin’?” he replies automatically, blinking the stardust from his eyes. 

“Don’t y’ think Jim’s pretty?”

“Only one prettier’s you, sweetheart,” he tells her. “You did a great job.”

“You’re next!”

He smiles at her and shuffles down into the spot Jim vacates with an upbeat, “I’m going to make cookies!” 

“I wanna make cookies!!” 

“You make Bones all pretty first,” Jim replies. “I’ll get everything ready and then we can have that tea party.” 

“Okay!” she chirps, taking the brush to his hair enthusiastically. Jim is barely out of the room when she wallops him with, “Daddy, can I live with you and Jim?” 

It’s like a punch to the gut, and he has no idea how he manages to keep it all down. Protecting his baby’s feelings he guesses. There’s nothing more he wants in all the universe. But Jocelyn has custody and she’s remarried and he’s nothing but a cadet. And an aviophobic one at that. 

“We’d love you to, darlin’, but what about Momma?” 

“Momma has Charlie now. She doesn’t need me.”

“You know that’s not true, Jo.”

She pouts and runs the brush through his hair for several long, silent minutes. “Charlie doesn’t like me,” she admits at length. 

“He just doesn’t know you well enough yet,” he soothes, though he agrees with her. Charlie was clearly in it for the trophy wife. Joanna was more than he’d bargained for and less than he was willing to tolerate. Leonard was already preparing himself for the inevitable battle should boarding school be brought up as an alternative while he was still on planet. 

“He doesn’t want to know me at all,” Jo replies with a sniff. The older she gets the more perceptive she is, and what he wouldn’t give to gather all her innocence back up and pour it all into her where it belonged. 

“Jo…”

“Why can’t I live with you and Jim?”

“It’s a school, honey. We can’t-”

“So we’ll move.” 

It isn’t Jo who suggests it. He looks up to find Jim in the doorway, leaning into it with the casual grace he usually exuded before he started a bar fight. 

Jo’s eyes light with hope as she turns to him. 

Leonard frowns. “Jim.”

Jim shrugs, completely unrepentant. “No kid should have to live with a step dad who doesn’t like them.” He says it casually. Light and breezy as if it’s of no consequence. But the set of his shoulders, the angle of his hips, the way his feet are braced…Leonard has no doubt if Charlie were on planet, Jim would be caving his face in at the earliest opportunity. 

“It’s not that easy,” he points out instead, hoping to put some sort of levelness into the argument before he let it get to his head and got on board for any plan that would keep the three of them together. 

“Sure it is.”

“Jocelyn has custody,” he points out, proud that the bitterness of it has been kept from his voice. He’s always tried to spare Jo that. Even if Jocelyn didn’t always return the courtesy. 

“Only because you didn’t fight her hard enough in the divorce.”

“We’ll be getting a commission.”

“So we take the one with the family option.”

“Jim, space-”

“I was born in space, Bones. I was conceived in space. Families live in space all the time. On starships even!”

“What’s conc-?”

“In a minute, Jo. Jim, I’m not exactly the prime candidate-”

“Bones, if you finish that sentence I swear to the Admiralty!”

He huffs out a heavy breath, frustrated at being cornered and angry that he is capable of fighting Jim even less than he was Jocelyn. The fact that he doesn’t want to fight it at all isn’t helping matters any. 

“Kids are only allowed on Starships with their _parents_ , Jim.”

“Legalities, Bones.”

“Marry Jim, Daddy!” 

She says it with such a burst of childish delight that they’re both taken aback for a moment. He can see something at work in Jim’s eyes. As if he’s trying to make it all make sense in his head but is missing vital elements of the equation. 

“You an’ Jim can get married and I can live in space with you!” 

He could kill Jim for putting the idea in her head. More of him wants to kiss him for it. Still more of him just wants to grab him by the arms, shove him up against the wall and-- He inhales deeply and pinches the bridge of his nose. 

“Come on, Princess,” Jim says gently. “That’s Daddy’s grumpy face. Let’s go make cookies. They’ll make him feel better.” 

Leonard really wishes the way Jim says it and Jo obeys wasn’t such a sweet echo of everything he wants. 

And he does want it. A whole hell of a lot. It’s a dangerous, living need that consumes him. He knows it’ll be a fight and he doesn’t care. If it means living like this with Jo and Jim, he’d even give up the stars. They could do it. Live on Earth. Be happy. Jim was born for greater things, but he’d stay if Leonard asked, he knows this to his core. He’d stay for Joanna. So she’d grow up in a home with parents who not only loved but adored her. 

It isn’t that Jocelyn doesn’t love Jo. She does, in her own way. But Jo was just the crown jewel in the line of things she could take and hurt him with and he’d been letting it go on for too damn long. The page saves him. Some idiot with delusions brought on by way too much incompatible ingested liquids saves him. He knows it isn’t over when he leaves the apartment. 

He knows it isn’t over when he returns. 

They’ve built a blanket fort in the living room. It stretches from the couch to the dining room table and it looks more like a caravan of old settling in. They must have used every last scrap they could find. Harvesting items from around the house. Pillows and blankets and towels and old sweaters...and in the middle Jim is stretched out on his back. He’s looking up at nothing but plaid pattern, with Jo tucked up beside him. Leonard has the horrible sinking feeling that generally comes when he realizes she’s been crying because of him. 

The rain patters across the windows and runs down the sides of their building in torrets. Thunder rumbles and lightning flashes periodically, illuminating the room. The cookies sit untouched on a plate beside them, only adding to the sinking feeling. 

“I meant it, you know,” Jim says by way of greeting. “I don’t want Jo living with someone who won’t ever love her.” 

Leonard takes off his shoes and drops his bag to the floor with a heavy sigh. He steps into the blanket fort carefully, even though the construction - courtesy of Jim - is fairly sound. 

“People like that…” His palm splays against Jo’s small back and brings her impossibly closer. She makes a soft sound in her sleep and snuggles into him, small fists clenching his shirt. Jim shifts enough to kiss her atop the head. “People like that should never be around kids.” 

“What do you want me to do, Jim?” he asks tiredly. “Fight Jocelyn for custody? Put Jo through courts and her parents using ugly words and accusations that aren’t even remotely true enough to warrant mention but’ll still stick with her for the rest of her life?”

“Fight for _Jo_ , Bones. Let her see you love her just as much as anyone. Sometimes all that matters is that you get angry. Kids need that. They need to know in ways they can understand that their parents love them. That they want them. Jo needs to know you’ll fight for her. Because she _needs_ you too, Bones. Even if you lose, she needs her Dad to be her champion.”

“I don’t want to fail her,” he admits quietly. 

“So don’t.”

“It ain’t that easy, Jim!”

“Don’t make it so complicated, Bones. Do you want Jo?”

“Yes.”

“No matter what?”

“Yes.”

“Then _do_ it. Put it all on the line. Risk everything. Your reputation, your sanity, your fabulous financial situation…” He smirks as Leonard snorts derisively. Reaching out, he settles his hand over Leonard’s knee and squeezes gently. “Do whatever you have to, Bones. You won’t be doing it alone.” 

He pats the hand that hasn’t moved. “I appreciate that Jim, I really do. But, you don’t know what you’re asking here.”

“Actually, I think I know better than you about this one, Bones. Just take my word for it. Jo’s better off with you.”

“Starfleet’s regs are clear, Jim. To even have a _chance_ I’d have to have a spouse. Someone with equal or greater rank who’ll be on ship to raise Jo with me and get her to safety if anything happens.”

“I’m familiar with that one.”

He nods. They don’t need to bring any of Jim’s demons into this argument. Leonard has enough to go around. “I just don’t think…” He heaves a sigh, looking at his baby girl. She’s already so different from the baby he’d been forced to leave behind. He’s missed so much. He’ll never get any of that time back. Could he really live with himself if he didn’t try?

“You’re strong enough,” Jim tells him, with a little shake courtesy of the hand that hasn’t left him. 

“I have a tendency to let the best things in my life slip away for their own sake.”

“Well that’s just plain stupid of you. Now, me I think we can both agree-” He blinks, eyes wide as they meet Leonard’s hovering just above him. His tongue peeks out, licking his lips with a nervous slide. “I don’t...do commitment well,” he says instead. 

“Darlin’, we’ve been livin’ together for three years and we haven’t killed one another yet.”

Jim swallows thickly. “No one…” His eyes dart sideways, sweeping over Joanna before returning to Leonard’s. 

“No one’s ever loved you right,” he tells him. “Til now.” He squeezes the hand beneath his, the one clenching his thigh slightly. He can practically feel Jim’s racing heart in the pulsing space between them. “I’m not asking you because I want your help. You’d help anyway. I’m asking because you, me and Jo...it’s _right_. And if she needs another parent, I only want someone who’s going to love her like she lit the stars.” 

Jim blinks again, but it’s because he’s trying not to let emotion overwhelm him. So Leonard distracts him. The kiss is like no kiss he’s ever had in his entire life. Jim lit a fire in him long ago and at the first touch of their lips it burns up his blood and makes him dizzy. Jim’s just as lost to it and just as surprised. The sounds he makes into Leonard’s mouth are not the sounds of a hotshot playboy. They’re the borderline hysterical utterings of a person who's finally found what they’ve been looking so desperately for their whole life. 

“Jo,” he rasps huskily at some point when they’ve pulled apart, so lost in the gaze of one another it’s a wonder they’re remembering to breathe. 

“‘ll be fine where she is,” he informs him, separating them gently. “No one’s going to hurt her here. And she’s fast asleep.”

Jim doesn’t argue. Lets himself be helped up and lead out of the blanket fort. Allows himself to be guided across the apartment and into Leonard’s room. He’s hesitant, unsure, all his confidence scattered to the winds under the force of the feelings being expressed toward him. He’s almost shy. It’s as endearing as it is heartbreaking. And Leonard makes it a point to deliver his love in steady kisses that trail slowly. It’s no shock that Jim is unused to love making. Sex, yeah, he’s good at that. Leonard knows from the many times he’s tried to sleep through the enthusiastic cries of Jim’s partners. But Jim handles sex the way he handles everything else. Quick, fast, and with little thought before full blown engagement. 

They leave the door open just enough that they’ll hear if Jo stirs. Leonard does his best to swallow all of Jim’s moans, even as Jim tries to muffle them himself. Their bodies come together in long, deep strokes. Arms about one another, hands caressing, knees locked in position to keep the rhythm. Jim is so goddamn beautiful when he comes. 

The rain is still falling as they lay in bed, Leonard stroking over Jim’s skin, committing every line and groove to memory. Jim’s face is mostly in Leonard’s pillow, arms crossed beneath it, stretched out in his bed like a beloved pet. 

“Jim,” he rumbles, voice still not quite recovered from earlier and gruff with the effort of keeping quiet. 

“Mmm?”

He rolls over until he’s on his belly as well, fingers moving to sweep over Jim’s temple. Jim makes a contented sound, body relaxing further. Pushing himself up onto his elbow, he leans over until they’re up close again. “Will you marry me?”

Jim’s mouth quirks in that sleepy smirk that Bones has only ever seen after someone else gave his best friend a good night. He shifts until he’s on his side, legs tangling with Leonard’s beneath the sheets. “Thought you’d never ask.”

In the morning, Jo doesn’t need to be told. She can sense the change in them the way all beings in tune with the universe can. She sits at the table and beams at them over her breakfast, legs swinging beneath her chair. “Jim,” she says thoughtful, prodding at her pancakes. “Can I call you Daddy now too?”

He smiles at her and sets a plate of strawberries down on the table in front of her. He’s allergic but they’re her favorite. Leonard’s eyes follow every motion of his body to ensure no contact was made - he _told_ the idiot to let him handle them. “I think that’d be a little confusing don’t you?” he replies diplomatically. In truth, Leonard knows Jim doesn’t want to alter their relationship any. But he can’t help that Jo loves him so much. Leonard himself isn’t against it, but he will give Jim his point. 

Jo considers, munching on a strawberry. “Can I call you Papa?” 

“Only if your Dad doesn’t mind.”

“You call him whatever you want, darlin’.” 

Jim picks up his fork and pokes his toast. He’s trying to process being so happy and it’s not computing, even in his genius brain. 

“Daddy?”

“Yes, darlin’?”

“Papa?”

Jim’s head snaps up. 

Jo smiles and stuffs syrup ladened confection into her mouth. “Are we gonna go live in the stars?”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

“Aww, Bones, leave her alone.”

His heart feels swollen to bursting. And there’s a pit of dread in his stomach settling in for a nice extended stay over the next few months. 

“We’re gonna try, Jo,” he tells her, before sipping his coffee. “We’re damn well going to try.”

“Bones, no cursing in front of Jo.”

Jo laughs as he chokes on his sip. Jim smiles and pats him on the back heartily. “And you know what, Princess?” he says, beaming at Jo. 

She looks at him, full of awe and wonder. It’ll wear off eventually - it _has_ to. But just for now, no one will replace Jim in her eyes. Leonard couldn’t be more pleased. 

“Papa’s gonna become a Captain and get you your very own starship.”

“ _Jim._ ”

“You just watch me.”


End file.
